MSNBC retracts false Palin story; others duped »

Posted By JamesMarcus 12 months ago in News

MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.

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JamesMarcus

James Marcus is a writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and ...

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    protoham12 months ago

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    After this election, MSNBC has made Fox look fair and balanced. I have removed MSNBC from my tv selection. These guys are full of Crap.

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      ameliog12 months ago

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      So long as Fox News exists as a partisan channel, MSNBC can be the counterpart on the left. There are many other places to go for news that is more heavily tilted toward information and less toward analysis than either cable channel.

      My problem with any partisan channels is that it forces the pundits to be predictable caricatures for their favored political party. If I know how they're going to respond then it's not analysis, it's simply spin, a collection of GOP or Dem talking points.

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